


Cuz I'm the king (of wishful thinking)

by ageolwian



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Background Nancy Wheeler, Billy Hargrove Needs a Hug, Jealousy, M/M, Misunderstandings, Not Season/Series 03 Compliant, POV Billy Hargrove, Period Typical Attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-24 05:31:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20353189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ageolwian/pseuds/ageolwian
Summary: ‘Harrington,’ says Billy dangerously, and Steve stands himself up very straight. ‘Did you make yourself a breakup mixtape?’Steve declines to answer, but Billy fast-forwards again and—wow, yep, that’s The Human League.‘It’s not a breakup tape,’ Steve says. ‘It’s just stuff I’m into at the moment.’ There’s a beat of silence between them. Oakey sings ‘don’t you want me, baby?’ into the pause. Steve concedes, ‘there’s some overlap.’Billy likes Steve, but Steve's not over Nancy, probably won’t be for a while actually, and what's more it's not like he's gonna be interested in boys anyway.





	Cuz I'm the king (of wishful thinking)

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** This... really got away from me. I thought I was dipping a toe in over here and instead I dunked the whole darn foot. Ah well, I won't pretend I'm not very pleased that I actually managed to finish something, even if I'm a little afraid of my creation now... look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Or enjoy. That would be good too.
> 
> **Warnings:** At one point in this story Billy thinks about calling someone a homophobic slur and has, in general, a very toxic headspace. Please take the POV Billy Hargrove tag very seriously. He's a beautiful disaster, folks.

Billy’s there when Steve goes through Nancy’s stuff. It’s not planned, he just happens to show up on Steve’s doorstep the Saturday morning. Neil ground his face into his toast and marmalade at breakfast and he hadn’t felt like sticking around at Cherry after he’d washed up.

He wouldn’t say Steve is particularly pleased to see him, but he lets him in all the same, with the concession that he can stay provided he isn’t an asshole.

Billy smiles disarmingly, all _have I ever_, and crosses his heart with a pinky finger. Not that he knows what he’s committing to in the slightest, because Steve doesn’t say in so many words why he’d almost turned Billy from his door. Instead they get to his room and Billy has to take in the waiting scene with a slow-dawning disgust. 

He firstly notices the box on the bed, _Nance _scrawled untidily on the side like otherwise Harrington might drop it off at the wrong house.  There are a few items in it—a fluffy pen, a white fucking cardigan, a neatly annotated copy of _Of Mice and Men—_the whole ensemble is barely even worth nosing through. 

There’s more though. The room is positively _strewn_ with feminine ephemera. Steve has clearly been going through his shelves and drawers and cupboards, having a cathartic ol’ clear-out.

‘Wow,’ Billy says.

He pauses to pick up a pair of nondescript good girl underwear from the comforter, only to have Steve immediately snatch them away and click aggressively in front of his face, like he’s a dog who needs to refocus his concentration.

‘Ah ah ah,’ Steve says. He pointedly makes the sign of an X over his chest and raises his eyebrows. ‘Remember?’

Billy huffs a laugh.

‘A promise is a promise,’ he agrees, and lopes over to the window, watching out of the corner of his eye as Steve folds the panties and puts them in the box. 

‘So what’s this then?’ Billy says, gesturing an expansive hand. ‘You trying to get some closure all of a sudden?’

‘Something like that,’ says Harrington. He glances up when he hears the window creak. There’s a frown on his face. ‘Hey, don’t smoke in here. I just finished washing all this, and I don’t want you fucking with the sandalwood and lavender.’

Billy glares at him_, _and slowly pockets the zippo that had just made an appearance out of his jeans pocket; plucks the cigarette from his lips and perches it back behind his ear. Closes the window again. Grunts when he’s thanked for his forbearance. 

‘Of _course _you did her laundry for her, Harrington,’ he says, going for exasperated.

‘I didn’t have much of a choice, man. It all stunk of weed.’ 

Steve slides him a look then, and yeah, okay, Billy may have something to do with that. Getting high is a big part of how they spend their time whenever he shows up here.

Not today though, apparently. 

Billy wanders a few paces over and parks himself in Harrington’s desk chair. It’s a swivel, so he swings himself lazily from side to side while he watches Steve go about his business.

As far as he can tell, the vast majority of Nancy’s leavings are books and stationery. When he quizzes Steve on it, Harrington shrugs and says she used to do a lot of homework here. Found it easier to concentrate or something.

Billy makes the obligatory sarcastic comment about what a wild ride his ex was, but he does actually get why. The Wheeler house is loud. Billy has to pick Max up from there every fucking Friday and it always sounds like everyone’s getting murdered inside.

Still, it’s _dull. _

There are some things that hold his attention halfway, though. A bra to match the underwear he’d barely gotten to inspect. A gold necklace that he briefly considers swiping before he realises the pendant is a pair of ballet slippers, are you kidding. A strip of pictures from a photo booth showing Wheeler with a ginger chick who looks kind of familiar. That last is being used as a bookmark, forgotten about between the pages of another Steinbeck novel. 

‘I know her,’ he says, tapping at the redhead’s face. ‘Why do I know her?’

Steve looks to what he’s found and his expression does something complicated. ‘That’s, ah, Barbara Holland. She died last year.’

‘She was in the paper,’ Billy realises. He’s seen Barbara Holland across the breakfast table, blocking out his Dad’s face. ‘Like, last week. What’s she doing in last week’s paper if she’s been dead for a year?’

Steve shrugs. ‘Dunno, man. Wasn’t her death a cover-up or something?’

‘I’m asking _you, _Hawkins.’

‘Okay, well, I don’t really know. I guess there was an accident at the lab - you know there was a lab just out of town, right? It’s closed now. I think her dying was something to do with that. Anyway, she and Nancy were friends.’ 

He takes the strip of photos from Billy’s hand. Billy watches him as he goes to his desk and finds an envelope to slip the pictures in. He might be shaking a little. The handwritten _Barb _he scrawls on the outside is barely legible.

‘You look freaked, man.’

‘’M fine.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Yeah,’ Steve says, and now he’s making a haphazard attempt to front. ‘It’s just weird, going through all this stuff, you know? Or maybe you don’t know. You ever dated anyone before?’

‘What the fuck kinda question is that?’ Billy grumbles, but Steve’s already shaking his head at him. 

‘I don’t mean like your standing thing with Robin Buckley where she sucks you off behind the bike shed, I mean like—long-term, and—exclusive. With real feelings involved.’

Billy doesn’t really know what to say to that. Even the people Billy’s liked and who’ve liked him—whatever they managed together wasn’t what he would call _dating. _

‘Okay, so I guess I don’t know,’ he says eventually, feeling like he’s showing way too much of his hand.

Steve doesn’t make a big thing of it, thankfully. Just makes an ‘mm’ noise and gets back to what he’s doing.

Billy feels a bit awkward, and tries to cover it up by going through Wheeler’s washbag. 

‘Do you think she’ll want this?’ Steve says, after a bit.

Billy glances over from the tube of mascara he’s eyeing speculatively. Steve is brooding at a large stuffed animal. It’s neon pink. Billy wrinkles his nose.

‘What is that?’ He says, hoping his tone conveys the appropriate level of disgust. Steve gives him a wry look that tells him he succeeded.

‘It’s a teddy bear, Rambo. I won it for her at the fair last summer.’

Billy lets that sit for a second.

‘You’re a cliche,’ he says. He grabs the bear out of Harrington’s hands and drops it in the box. ‘Unless you wanna keep it?’ He says, raising his eyebrows. ‘Somethin’ for you to hold at night?’

‘Asshole,’ Steve says, reminding him of their terms.

Billy snorts and turns away. ‘Whatever. Can I put some music on? This is really fucking depressing.’

‘Tape deck’s over there.’ Steve waves a hand.

When Billy gets there, there’s already a cassette loaded. He pushes idly at the play button to hear what’s inside, and it’s about that moment that Steve seems to have a horrible realisation across the room.

‘Wait, no—’

It only takes a second for Billy to identify Wham! as it belts out from the speakers, not that he has ever listened to them for longer than it takes to change a radio station. ‘What the fuck,’ he says.

Steve has gone stock-still like a deer in a fog beam, George Michael is OH-OH-WHOAing his great big heart out, and Billy is giving the other boy in the room a truly dead-eyed stare.

‘This somethin’ else for that box?’ He says. 

‘Ah, that one’s actually mine,’ Steve says shamefacedly, but Billy knew that already, just from his reaction. He pushes fast-forward, despite Harrington’s panicked bleating in the background.

‘—_I’m all out of love, I’m so lost without you_—’

‘Harrington,’ says Billy dangerously, and Steve stands himself up very straight. ‘Did you make yourself a breakup mixtape?’

Steve declines to answer, but Billy fast-forwards again and—wow, yep, that’s The Human League.

‘It’s not a breakup tape,’ Steve says. ‘It’s just stuff I’m into at the moment.’ There’s a beat of silence between them. Oakey sings ‘_don’t you want me, baby_?’ into the pause. Steve concedes, ‘there’s some overlap.’

‘Uhuh. Why does this exist?’

‘Did I fucking know you were coming over?’ Steve demands, arms spread wide. ‘Did I _foresee_ you going through all my stuff and shitting on my music?’

‘I fucking _asked—_’

‘Turn it off. I hate you. Turn it off.’

‘No, I wanna hear what else is on here—,’

‘_Turn it off_.’

Steve makes a move for the deck; Billy steps in to defend it, and the situation rapidly devolves. Billy is pressed back against the desk, its edge digging uncomfortably into his rear, and Steve is trying to get round him, flinging arms out every so often either side of him to reach for the stop button. 

It’s very cute. Billy spins them and presses him up against a wall.

‘One, two, three,’ Billy murmurs mockingly, counting him out. He doesn’t bother going up to ten, though. Just goes quiet and watchful, looking over Steve’s flushed face. 

‘Knockout,’ he says, baring his teeth, and pulls back. ‘We’re putting it in the box.’

‘We’re not putting it in the box.’

‘We are _absolutely_ putting it in the box; Wheeler needs to know what she’s done to you.’

If you sneak it in the box I will buzz your mullet off after you pass out tonight.’

‘Sorry, am I staying over now? That’s pretty presumptuous of you there, Harrington.’

‘Yeah, uhuh, like you ever make it back to Cherry after drowning yourself in my Dad’s liquor cabinet.’

Billy gets the tape out of the deck. It’s unlabelled, so he takes it upon himself to do the job. Grabs a sharpie and scrawls _EAT A DICK WHEELER _across the front_,_ with a weeping illustration for emphasis.

Which kind of sets the tone for the rest of the entire operation. Or, at least, Billy’s mode of its execution. 

He’s finally banished from the room when he pretends to have found Wheeler’s diaphragm, and he takes himself downstairs as ordered, cackling all the way.

*

‘Steve. Hey Steve.’

‘Yeah?’ Steve says warily.

‘I was just having a look round your house for any more of Wheeler’s things, doing my bit, you know, and well, don’t you think she’ll want this back?’

He shoves over a framed photograph, barely holding it together.

Steve looks at it and sighs.

‘That’s me, Billy,’ he says tiredly.

‘What are you talking about, it’s clearly a girl.’

‘No, it’s me playing the Virgin Mary in an elementary school Christmas play. You know this, because you’ve killed yourself laughing at it before.’

‘This is Nancy fucking Wheeler,’ Billy insists, waving it about in front of his face. ‘That’s a real wild story you’re trying to sell, Harrington, and I ain’t buying. Why would you get cast as the fucking Madonna over some radiant eight-year-old princess?’

‘Laurie O’Shea got cold feet. She asked if I would pretend to be her, seeing as how we both looked kinda similar back then.’

‘Big fucking bug eyes,’ Billy choked out, giving up the pretence at ignorance, ‘hair long enough to—to—_French braid_.’ He bursts into guttural laughter.

‘So you helped yourself to the Glenlivet then.’

‘Brought you some,’ Billy says, pushing a tumbler into Steve’s chest. ‘How you getting on up here?Ready to go?’

‘Yeah,’ Steve says, setting down the whiskey without taking a sip. ‘I was about to load the car up.’

‘I’ll help,’ Billy says, because Steve’s up to two boxes of his ex’s stuff now. He hoists the larger into his arms and follows Steve out of his house. 

‘I’ll drive.’

‘I’m taking the BMW.’

‘Right, so I’ll drive.’

Steve gives him a flat, unimpressed look. ‘Billy. You’re not coming. You can stay here if you want until I get back, but I’m not taking you with me to see my ex.’

‘Why not? I’ll wait in the car. Wheeler won’t even know I’m there.’

‘_I’ll _know you’re there.’

‘Exactly. You’ll know I’m there. If things go south and you need a shoulder to cry on. It’ll be a great comfort to you.’

Steve rolls his eyes. ‘Fine, whatever. You’re still not driving.’ He hip-bumps him away from the driver’s side and gets in.

Billy smirks to himself, and goes to the passenger door.

It’s not far to Wheeler’s from here. Nothing’s really far in Hawkins. It wouldn’t have taken them overlong to carry the boxes there if they’d been so inclined. This is smoother, though. They’ll be in and out within half an hour, and Steve’s polo won’t get pit stains on the way over. He might even look good enough to make Nancy regret her life choices. 

That’s if he manages to loosen up a little on the drive over, though, because right now he’s kind of wild-eyed and tense. It makes Billy feel a bit odd. Before today, Steve hasn’t really mentioned Nancy for well over a month, and when he has the comments are always offhand and casual, as though he isn't cut up over her anymore. There’s a difference between talking about a dead thing and exhuming it, though. Maybe going through the physical markers of their relationship has churned up a half-settled grave. 

They pull up on Maple Street and idle for a full nine seconds before Steve turns the engine off. Billy thinks he might have made an agreement with himself that he wouldn’t reach ten. Except after that he just sits there awkwardly, hands still at ten to two on the wheel.

‘We’re here,’ Billy remarks, unnecessarily. Gives it another few seconds, and then prompts again: ‘Harrington.’

‘Yeah, I got it, just... give me a second.’

Billy gives him a second. When he still doesn’t move he sighs and rolls his head exasperatedly on his neck. ‘What is this, amigo, I thought you two were ash.’

‘It’s not as simple as that. I’ve said. We were together for, like, a year.’

‘You said she never loved you,’ Billy says matter-of-factly. 

‘Oh, _real _classy bringing that up, Hargrove—’

‘_You _said that.’

‘Yeah, well, I loved her,’ Steve says roughly. ‘So it’s not that fucking simple, all right? Get out of my ass.’

Billy shrugs, looking away from Steve’s miserable face and out over the Wheelers’ lawn. He realises he can make out the mom in one of the downstairs windows—what’s her name again? Karen?

‘You know I don’t actually care, right?’ he says. ‘Just hurry up and get this over with so we can go smoke in your room again.’

There’s a long silence at that. When he looks back over Steve has levelled him with a long, disbelieving stare.

It makes him uneasy. 

‘What?’

Steve just shakes his head and gets out of the car. He goes to grab the boxes from the trunk, stacking them one atop the other and heading to the front door. 

Billy watches him all the way there, feeling oddly like he’s misstepped somehow. 

He tries not to dwell on it. Steve’s left him alone in the BMW. He’d be an idiot to waste the opportunity. 

He transfers himself over into the driver’s seat with a strategic kick and a nubile body roll. The keys are still in the ignition. He turns them so the engine rumbles to life and he can enjoy the exquisite torture of Depeche Mode bopping out of the speakers. 

There are a bunch of cassettes littering the passenger footwell—probably more in the glovebox too—but Billy knows better than to go searching through them for a better tape. Steve’s not gonna have anything he wants to hear. He’s already been reminded today just how terrible the guy’s music taste is. 

He’s about to take the Beamer for a loop of Maple when he sees Karen Wheeler coming through her front door and making like she’s gonna come say hi.

He immediately kills the engine. He doesn’t want her thinking he’s listening to this music of his own volition. 

‘Hello Billy,’ she says warmly, after he’s cranked down the window. ‘I thought it was you in there.’

‘Hey Mrs Wheeler. Karen,’ he corrects, when he sees the start of a pout. ‘How’s your weekend going?’

‘Fine. Just fine. And yours? What are you and Steve up to? I didn’t realise you two were friends.’

Billy’s not always at ease with the fact himself. He feels the absurd urge to deny it, even as he sits in Steve’s car waiting for him to finish chatting with his ex. Then, in a flare of feeling equally strong, he’s so possessive of the idea that he’s irritated it’s not more widely known. 

Instead of saying anything that he’s actually thinking, he shrugs and purrs, ‘You know me, Mrs Wheeler. Friend to everyone.’ 

She laughs; of fucking course she does. 

‘It’s nice to see him round here again,’ she says, glancing back at the house. ‘Though I think Nancy’s seeing Jonathan Byers these days.’ She sounds a little mournful. Billy would hazard a guess that Steve makes the better dinner guest. 

‘I don’t think he’s here for that.’

‘Maybe that’s what he said,’ she says knowingly. ‘But you boys always talk so tough with one another. Don’t be surprised if it turns out he does want her back.’

Billy shrugs to hide his discomfort. ‘You’d know better than I would. You must have had plenty of guys begging you to give them all kinds of chances.’

‘Maybe a few,’ she says, with unconvincing modesty.

‘I won’t believe a figure less than fifty.’

‘Goodness, fifty?’ She says, with a laugh. ‘Wouldn’t that make me a bit of a yes girl?’

‘The only kind of girl worth knowing,’ he says, trying a slight leer, and she seems appropriately flustered. Her face flushes, and she smiles as she looks down at her feet, flicking quick little looks up at him through her eyelashes. Billy feels a distinct sense of satisfaction that they’re doing this in the middle of the street, where anyone might see how he’s looking at her, how he’s playing her like he was born to the instrument. Billy could probably get her to ride him into the front seat if he wanted. She’d likely make him move the car away to a less conspicuous spot, just to avoid the slim possibility of her husband paying enough attention to spot them fucking at the end of his own driveway, but he could do it. Mrs Wheeler’s very receptive to his charm. 

She’s beautiful too, which doesn’t hurt. If he could—if he liked—

Well. If things were different. He might ask if she wanted to say yes to something with him, someday, sometime. Now wasn’t really good to be honest, what with Steve about to reappear at any moment, but he could put it out there. See if she’d bite. 

But things aren’t different and, while Billy knows that his life would be a lot easier if he could just work up the gumption to stick it to a coose every once in a while, he struggles with following through on this thing with her. Goes hot and cold at the notion, feels sick. Wants, occasionally and humiliatingly, to cry. 

So. Eating her with his eyes on Maple Street will have to do. Disappointingly, there’s no visible audience until Steve comes out of the house five minutes later. He looks downright miserable, but when he sees them together he seems to come out of his own head a bit. He startles, then scowls, and then his expression smooths over so Billy can’t tell what he’s thinking at all. 

‘Oh, hello Steve,’ says Mrs Wheeler.

‘Hi Mrs Wheeler.’

‘We haven’t seen you in a while - how have you been keeping? Were you just by to see Nancy?’

Billy watches Steve’s face like a hawk.

‘Uh, yeah. Just briefly. I had some stuff to give her. It’s fine. I’ve been fine.’ He glances at Billy. There’s something desperate in his eyes, so Billy intervenes.

‘We should go, Karen. We gotta take the kids to the arcade,’ he says. Mrs Wheeler looks a bit surprised, probably because her son is likely still asleep in his own bed, not having mentioned any such event.

‘Okay,’ she says, as Steve slinks round to the passenger side. ‘Drive safe, boys.’

‘Thanks Karen. You have a good weekend now.’

He peels off. 

There’s silence in the car. When Billy checks, Steve is staring dead ahead, looking a little vacant. _What else is new?_ He thinks to himself. Wishes, for the umpteenth time, he didn’t find it so goddamned cute.

‘Karen,’ Steve says suddenly.

‘What about her?’

‘No, I mean—you’re calling her _Karen_.’

‘That’s her name.’

Steve glares at him. ‘Don’t give me that. You were calling her Karen, you were giving her the _look—‘_

‘What look?’ Billy says beatifically. 

‘The look!’ Steve gesticulates. ‘_Your _look. You know _exactly_ what I’m trying to say here.’

‘No I don’t,’ he says (he does, and it’s exactly what he wanted from this). Steve’s glare is reaching a fevered temperature at this point. 

‘She’s Nancy’s _Mom, _Billy.’

‘Moms are people too, Harrington. They got wants and needs just like any of us.’

‘Yeah, so don’t take fucking advantage, is what I’m saying. I mean it. She’s got a family, and you don’t even—’

‘I don’t even what?’ Billy says, feeling decidedly less smug all of a sudden. 

Steve meets his gaze evenly. ‘It’s not the same for you as it is for her. You know that. Other people have got so much more to lose over whatever _that _was, so don’t go ruining lives when you don’t even feel anything real.’

‘Oh, I feel plenty,’ Billy says, and the leer he gives then is full force, nothing like the carefully inviting one he’d given Mrs Wheeler. 

‘Fuckssake, Billy, are you even listening to me?’

‘Oh my god, _relax_,’ Billy says impatiently. ‘You’ve seen me put the moves on Mrs Wheeler a million times and never done more than roll your fucking eyes. Don’t get on my back now just because you’re messed up again all of a sudden over Wheeler fucking Byers in the darkroom every lunchtime.’

Steve goes silent then, which is a relief at first, but then actually makes Billy feel even worse. Depeche Mode is still playing, and the air is bad between them, thick with the ill-fitting pop music and words left unspoken.

Billy coughs a bit. ‘So how was it seeing the ex anyway?’ He says gruffly, trying a change of subject. ‘Did your magic box work? Are you over her now?’

‘I don’t know man—did you manage to convince Hawkins you like pussy yet?’

Billy jerks in his seat. The car judders as his foot skates off the clutch and the pedal jumps up. He manages to right it just before it stalls. 

‘_What _did you just say to me?’ He says, cutting quick, wide-eyed looks across the car at intervals. Steve’s face is unreadable, but he scoffs lightly, a little catch of air in his throat. 

‘With Mrs Wheeler,’ he clarifies, voice lighter than a fucking meringue. ‘That’s what it’s all about with her, right?’

Billy finds himself wholly unable to speak. He’s stopped trying to look at Steve. Is staring fixedly through the windshield. 

Steve frowns at him.

‘What, man, you think I don’t _know_?’

There’s a horribly awkward silence. Billy could use some clarification on that—what, exactly, does Steve think he knows? That Billy’s not the player he purports to be? 

Somehow he doesn’t think he’s that lucky. 

It’s in the way Steve’s looking at him now, his short-lived malice eking over into pity, like a hunter looking at an animal in its trap. Yeah, Harrington _knows_ all right.

Billy closes his eyes, and hits the brakes.

‘Get out.’

‘What? Billy—‘

‘_Out._’

‘Okay, no, we need to talk—‘

‘Get out of the fucking car, Harrington!’ Billy shouts at him.

‘This is my fucking BMW!’ Steve flares back at him.

‘No, amigo, it’s your _Daddy’s _BMW, and he’s probably fucked your Mom in the seat you’re sitting in right now, so why don’t you give your ass a break from all that Greek tragedy and pound the pavement with your own two feet a while.’

‘What the fuck are you talking about Greek tragedy for, Hargrove, what _is_ that,’ says Steve, mystified, and he is —humiliatingly— beginning to laugh with an incredulous fury. Billy wants to rip his face off. ‘You are _such _a nerd underneath everything, aren't you? I've always thought. You know sometimes I can’t believe you ever won that fight at Halloween.'

‘Stay where you are and I’ll remind you, I swear to God.’

The car goes quiet again.

‘You’ll _remind_ me,’ Steve echoes dangerously. ‘What, you’d—you’d start on me like that again, would you?‘

Billy doesn’t say anything. He can feel himself making the mistake, tipping over that precipice, but it’s hardly a long way down from here. He’s already taken the tumble that broke his neck in two and spilled his insides down the rock face.

‘Fine,’ Steve says. Billy hears the door snap open. ‘Fine. Whatever, asshole. Take my Dad’s car. Drive it into the quarry for all I care.’

Billy laughs humourlessly. ‘Tell everyone I sucked your dick first. Unless you want anyone to miss me when I’m gone.’

‘Billy—’ Steve sounds alarmed at that, sounds sorry, but Billy doesn’t stick around to hear what he might say. The Beamer roars away from the kerb, leaving Steve, mere doors down from where Billy can still make out Karen Wheeler standing in her yard.

*

Billy doesn’t drive the Beamer into the quarry. He drives it back to Steve’s house and parks it on the drive. Gets back in the Camaro. Goes home.

Tries not to feel like he’s dying, but that’s basically impossible. He has to pull over twice to put his head between his knees and suck in long, forced breaths until he feels safe to drive again.

He wishes he’d kicked Harrington to the kerb at speed; he wishes he’d watched the body skipping down the road in his rearview mirror like a hard-flung stone across a pond.

Harrington knows, and Billy wants to die. 

*

In early November, Kowalski busted the scab on Harrington’s head during basketball practice. He was a real mess; there was blood dripping onto the maplewood floor, and Coach yelled at Kowalski for five minutes straight even though it was hardly his fault someone had broken a plate over Harrington’s skull a week prior. 

He got sent to the nurse, and because there was so much blood Coach sent Billy along with him to make sure he didn’t drop down dead on the journey. ‘And put a shirt on you animal!’ Coach yelled after them. 

Billy didn’t put a shirt on. Steve showed no sign of letting him stop for one in the changing rooms, so he just went without. Pretty soon Steve shucked his too to use it to stem the bleeding, so they were both baring skin as they make their way through the corridors.

The nurse wasn’t even there. The lady on reception next-door said she’d popped out for a smoke and they could just wait outside for her, looking supremely unconcerned by the teenage boy bleeding all over the carpet.

They stood around by the door in silence, and it grew increasingly awkward as time stretched on. Billy found himself a little jealous of Steve, who did at last have a task to busy himself with, alternately pressing down on and wiping at his head with his scrunched-up shirt. His technique of blood-stemming was pretty ineffectual, and seeing as how his face was angled down the occasional droplet kept falling to the ground.

‘Watch it,’ Billy said, as a splash landed dangerously close to his sneakers.

Steve glared at him with one eye. It was more pitiful than threatening. 

Billy found himself sticking out his hand without really thinking about it, gesturing for the shirt. Steve gave him a look, so he waggled his fingers more impatiently which got him to hand it over. He folded it neatly into a thick compress and handed it back. ‘Try that. Don’t wipe, just hold, Harrington. And tip your head back, for godsakes.’

Strangely, Steve did as he was told, and things mildly improved. Maybe it was his grudging sense of gratitude that had Steve making an attempt to talk to him then, because after a pause the other boy said mournfully, ‘it was almost healed. It was gonna be gone in another week.’

It didn’t _sound_ like he was trying to make Billy feel bad. His voice had a conversational quality, inviting Billy to commiserate with him. 

It made Billy uncomfortable even still. 

‘It woulda scarred either way,’ he tried cautiously.

‘D’you think?’

‘I know,’ Billy said. ‘But no one’s gonna see it, pretty boy. It’ll be hidden by your hair. You got more than enough of it.’

‘You’re one to talk, Hargrove.’

‘I didn’t mean—it was just an observation.’

He looked to the end of the corridor, the way the nurse would be coming if she weren’t still in the parking lot puffing at the dark mother’s teat.

‘This is ridiculous,’ Billy muttered. Steve was going to wind up fucking anaemic.

‘Wait here,’ he said to him. He headed back to the reception desk, charmed a few paperclips out of _call me Janet, _which he twisted out of shape and started reconstructing on his way back to Harrington—one into a right angle and the other out into knobbly line.

‘Out of the way,’ he said to Steve, and started getting close and personal with the lock.

‘Billy,’ Steve hissed, checking the corridor and then moving in to shield the operations with his body.

‘She’s not coming back til she’s contracted lung cancer,’ he said. ‘Let’s just get in, get you some stuff, and get out of here. I got places to be.’

‘Do you even know how to pick a lock?’

‘I know to do all kinds of shit, Harrington. Now shut up, I’m trying to concentrate.’ He hadn’t actually picked a lock in a while and it would’ve sucked to embarrass himself in front of the recently deposed King of Hawkins High. He tried to ignore the other boy at his back, concentrating on feeling out the pins in the mechanism. Once they had given out one by one he turned his paperclip wrench harder in the hole, and the door clicked open.

The nurse’s office was small and thin, with a raised cot along one wall and cheap counters along the other. One of the latter had a small sink with a few mugs and teaspoons sitting on its draining board. The walls were painted a minty green and the whole room was well-lit by the window along the far wall.

Harrington went to lean against the cot, looking very bloody and macabre in the pale wash of his surroundings while Billy busied himself rooting around in cupboards.

‘Here, clean yourself up,’ Billy said, running a cloth he’d found under the tap and chucking it at Harrington’s chest. The other boy did as he was told, daubing at his neck and chest, at first just sort of smearing the blood around, but after he’d rinsed the cloth out a few times he ended up looking just a few shades pinker than his usual. It didn’t actually look too bad on him. He was a sallow motherfucker otherwise. 

He also dabbed briefly at a smear on his sneakers before Billy made an authoritative _gimme _motion with his hand and he handed the cloth over hesitantly. Billy used it to start on his face, which was easily the most pressing issue. He had a thick glistening sheet of red from his right temple down to the side of his jaw, and it’d gone into his eyebrow and hair and into his ear and everything. Billy wrinkled his nose in distaste, just kind of pawing roughly at the mess, turning Steve’s face every which way as he cleaned him up.

It probably hurt a fair bit, because Harrington eventually pulled away. ‘Jesus, man, just tell me where you want me to look,’ he said impatiently, batting at Billy’s hands when they advanced to make another grab.

Billy glared, then indicated somewhere around the general vicinity of his earring. When Harrington complied, he did take hold of his chin again, but a little more gently and just to hold him still. He didn’t push him around.

But then he dumped half a bottle of iodine in his gash without warning, so it wasn’t all sugar without spice. Steve swore at him, all the more vociferously once it started dripping down into his eye. 

Billy rolled his eyes. ‘Keep your panties on, Harrington.’

‘Hardly a problem round you, Hargrove,’ he said wryly. 

Billy flicks his temple, right on the offending cut. ‘Less of that, or I might stop playing nurse over here.’

And then he actually _winked_, and he _hated _himself the moment he did it and every moment after. Where had that come from? He hadn’t said anything of the like to this straight kid since before he ground him into a hardwood floor.

‘Wow, this again.’

Billy froze. Harrington had never actually addressed this in so many words. What did he think of it? He sounded tired. Looked it too.

Billy lowered his eyes. He felt an old familiar lurch of shame. Went back to patching the other boy up in silence.

They didn’t speak again until long after Billy had finished his ministrations. They’d left the nurses’ office, Billy surreptitiously swiping some supplies for his first aid shelf back home, and by the time they got back to practice it was over. Coach grunted at them from his office when he saw Steve was more or less put back together, and then the pair of them grabbed their stuff and went.

It was out in the parking lot that Billy kept thinking he had to say something else. He couldn’t leave it on that note, with Harrington thinking—well, whatever he was thinking—so he wanted to say—he wanted to say—what did he want to say? He could insult him, maybe, like _I hope you haven’t gotten any moronic ideas about this because I do not fucking like you in any way at all_, and he’d half-settled on that, was thinking about calling Steve a fag or something to _really_ seal the deal, but instead what came out of his mouth was—

‘I’m sorry, all right?’

Harrington stopped dead in his tracks and stared at him. ‘What?’

Billy felt a horrible twisting in his stomach, like something had been thrown in his gears. But he was in it now.

‘For your face, or whatever.’ He gestured vaguely, busied himself with a final drag on his cig and dropping it to grind under his heel. When he chanced a look up, Steve was still staring at him. ‘What, are you slow or something, Harrington? I’m sorry I fucked you up last week.’

‘I’m not slow. I just didn’t think we were talking about that,’ Steve said. 

‘Right, ‘cause we talk so much about everything else in our lives.’

Steve nodded, like he was conceding the point.

‘So are we good?’

‘We can be good. Uh, I’m sorry too. For hitting you a bunch. Even though you started it and to be honest you kind of deserved everything you got.’

Billy snorted.

‘You need a ride home, or?’

‘I’m all right,’ Steve said. ‘Thanks.’

‘Okay.’

Billy stood there awkwardly. There was no graceful way to disengage now. ‘See you tomorrow,’ he tried. He could add something about cold-soaking that t-shirt as soon as he got home but whatever, he wasn’t his mother, nor was he particularly keen to put it out there that he cared about his laundry. Steve could afford to buy a new one anyway. 

‘Yeah, see you,’ Steve said, and Billy went to his car.

When he got in, the rest of the Hargrove-cum-Mayfields were sat around the kitchen table, finishing off dinner. 

‘Billy,’ Susan said, smiling sweeter than a ginger snap. ‘Thank God you’re home, we were beginning to worry.’ Her eyes flit briefly to Neil as she said it, which told Billy this had been a topic of some _attention._

‘Sorry. One of the other guys opened up a gash on their head during play. Coach asked me to help sort it out.’ He kept it offhand, light, as he headed over to the unofficial first aid shelf and started putting away his spoils. 

Max snorted. ‘Was the other guy called Steve Harrington?’

‘Who’s that?’ Susan said.

Billy was concentrating very hard on rearranging the shelf, which used to not exist before Billy cleared out all the baking crap Susan had in there, and she was smart enough to keep her mouth shut about it.

‘He’s no one, just some senior Max is obsessed with,’ Billy said, over Max’s indignant spluttering.

‘He’s eighteen?’ said Susan, looking alarmed. ‘Oh, honey, I don’t think—‘

‘I’m not obsessed with Steve Harrington,’ Max said loudly. ‘He’s just a nice guy, is all. He helps Mrs Henderson out with Dustin if she can’t get him places—you remember, Mom, she’s on her own. Only _somebody _beat Steve’s face in the other week, so I was wondering if Billy was talking about him.’

‘Billy, were you talking about Steve?’ Neil asked.

‘Yes,’ Billy gritted out.

‘Was he okay?’

‘He was _fine_,’ Billy said, through clenched teeth. 

‘Come and have some dinner, Billy,’ Susan said. She’d gotten up while they were talking to take a full plate out of the oven. 

Billy did a rapid cost-benefit analysis in his head of how much he stood to lose if he refused. He did not want to sit round the table with them, especially when Neil was already ticked off about his being late. His Dad would be predisposed to find further faults with his behaviour the longer he was in his company. However, if he went to his room that was a sure-fired guarantee of fall-out anyway, and it was the weekend. He didn’t want to rock the boat when he had two full days to get through yet. 

But then again, this weekend was already going to suck, because he wasn’t going to stop thinking about what an _idiot _he had been apologising to Harrington like that, so what the hell.

‘I’m not hungry,’ he said, and watched with a perverse sense of satisfaction as Neil went purple in the face. 

*

Billy stewed all that weekend. What the fuck had he gone and said _sorry_ for? He’d gone and made himself look _weak, _and what was more it was unlikely to have fixed things anyway. Billy kept thinking back to Steve’s cut jetting blood all down the side of his face. That sort of damage went beyond apologies for most. Billy’d gotten into it with enough people to know. 

He even tried it with his Dad a few more times, wanting a distraction, something else to eat him alive instead, but after striping his back with a belt five times on Friday Neil was in a strangely good mood—reacted to Billy saying that Susan’s Shepherd’s Pie looked like shit mixed with mash with a chortle and a jovial, ‘He’s got a point, hon.’

Except then Susan looked like they’d both punched her in the face, one after the other, so Billy _did _get something else to think about after all. Not that he gave a shit about Susan, and he didn’t feel much either way about it really, apart from that she was some new kind of idiot not to run state lines as soon as Neil Hargrove started looking at her to criticise.

‘It’s fine, Mom,’ Max said, rolling her eyes as she shovelled it in. ‘Don’t listen to them.’

‘Oh, I don’t take it personally, honey. They’re just being boys.’

Max stepped up where Neil had stood down though, shoving Billy up against the driver-side door of the Camaro later when he was about to take her off to the Wheeler house for playtime with her gang of freaks. 

‘What the fuck, Maxine?’ He said. He could push her off, easy, but he was wary of it so close to the house. 

‘Mom was cooking that for hours, you ass,’ she hissed. 

‘What d’you want me to say to that?’

‘Nothing. I don’t care if you never have two words for her, just don’t _start _on her like that with your bullshit, Billy. You said you were gonna leave me and my friends alone, and she counts, all right? She’s my mom. Obviously she counts.’

‘I understand,’ Billy said, with _extreme_ difficulty, and wishing he’d never got ground under her heel. A lot of power came from thinking you had it, and that little episode at the Byers’ seemed to have gone a long way for little Maxine.

‘You know, if you really cared about your Mom so much,’ Billy said, opening the door of the Camaro and ducking inside, ‘maybe you wouldn’t leave her alone so much to hang out with a bunch of nerds.’

‘She’s not alone. Your Dad’s with her.’

Billy started the car and let the sound of its waking rumble be his response.

*

So all that shit worked for a while, except then he drove by the Wheelers’ and he saw Harrington’s goddamn BMW by the kerb. He had to let Max out three houses down with a muttered promise to be back at eight, before speeding away without even revving his beautiful V8 engine. Hadn’t wanted to draw attention to himself.

Was Harrington spending his Saturday night with a bunch of middle schoolers? Did he _know _he was eighteen years old? Had anyone told him? Honestly he really deserved that beatdown. Billy couldn’t believe he’d _apologised _for that. He wanted to fucking _die._

So then he was back to thinking about that.

He kept his head down on Monday, tried to acknowledge as few people as possible in the corridors, not wanting to accidentally find himself making eye contact with someone he’d rather he didn’t. He didn’t even want to look up when someone sat opposite him at lunch, even though it was probably only someone harmless like Tommy or Carol, but he didn’t want to look like he was some fucking shrinking violet, so he raised his head, jutting out his chin. 

‘Hi,’ said Steve Harrington. 

‘Hey,’ Billy said dumbly, after a pause. 

There was a very awkward silence, and then they both, by apparently mutual but silent agreement, focussed on their food.

As time wore on, though, they made a bit of conversation, establishing that neither of them had done very much with their weekend, which was very bad if you were Steve apparently, because he hadn’t finished their English assignment. 

‘I saw you at Wheeler’s Saturday night,’ Billy couldn’t help saying, on a slight sneer. ‘I’m sure she was a huge help when you pressed your... heads... together.’

There was a pause. 

‘I didn’t see Nancy,’ said Harrington quietly. A slow, deep burn was spreading over his face. ‘I was helping out one of the kids.’

‘Henderson?’ Billy said, because he was pretty sure that was the name of the one who waited in the parking lot sometimes after school.

‘Ah... no, actually. Do you know El? Has Max mentioned her at all?’

‘I don’t talk to Max all that much.’

‘Okay. Well, she’s another friend of theirs. Her Dad works, and she hasn’t got a mom, so I sometimes take her places if she needs.’

‘You’re a real bleeding heart, Harrington.’ He wanted it to sound mean, but he was not sure he managed. Steve smiled at him, and looked a little less uncomfortable.

That was when Carol and Tommy showed up, with a few other friends Steve probably was not on the closest terms with, having been out of the social circuit for just under a year. His newfound air of ease dissipated promptly, and he looked carefully at his food. 

Carol and Tommy, for their part, clearly did not know what to make of the addition to their company at all, and seemed to be proponents of the idea that they pretend Steve wasn’t there. The group talked loudly to one another, ignoring him entirely, and Steve listened but didn't alert them to the fact that he was one of their number.

When this had been going on a while, Billy nudged his foot under the table. Steve startled, and looked at him in surprise. Billy raised his eyebrows. ‘So, is she as bad as the rest of them? El?’

Steve stared at him, and then a small smile lifted his lips at either corner. ‘She’s sweet. Real quiet. Bit like Will, I guess.’

‘Which one’s Will?’

‘Bowl cut. Big eyes.’

‘You’re one to talk, Bambi,’ Billy said—which was a terrible accident, what was _wrong _with him, except Steve didn’t seem to mind, and he told a story about the teachers getting him mixed up a lot with Laurie O’Shea back in elementary school, and they kept talking while the others jabbered on about classes and sex and basketball, and when everyone got up to leave, Steve and Billy could probably have kept going, but Billy wanted to smoke, nor did he want to come off like he cared about Harrington’s company, so they parted ways. 

And that was how Billy wound up having his first normal conversation with Steve Harrington.

Which, when he thought about it, didn’t seem all that unusual. After the breakup with Wheeler, Harrington was pretty bereft in the friends department. He’d been hanging out with Wheeler a lot still, and Byers by necessity of their two-for-one package deal, but that was probably uncomfortable for everyone, and maybe Harrington didn’t want to spend the rest of his senior year living off his ex-girlfriend’s charity. 

*

‘What are you doing tonight, Bill?’ Neil asked his son round the dinner table, one day later that week. 

‘I have homework,’ he said, but it was almost a question.

‘So does Max. At her friend’s house, across town.’

‘Oh,’ Billy said. ‘Okay. When do you wanna go?’ He addressed the last to Max.

‘After dinner?’ Max asked. ‘It shouldn’t take long.’

‘You can wait for her in the car,’ said Neil.

‘I’m sure Mrs Wheeler will have him in,’ Susan said.

‘It’s fine,’ Billy said. ‘I have a book I need to read for English. I’ll wait outside.’

In the car, Billy surprised Max—and himself, by asking about her homework.

‘It’s a group project for Biology.’

‘Who’s in your group?’

‘The party,’ Max said.

Billy knew that he was meant to understand that the ‘party’ included Will Byers, Dustin Henderson, Lucas Sinclair, and Mike Wheeler. He hated it, but had to admit it was a fairly convenient method of identification. 

Now, however, he played dumb. ‘Who’s in the party?’

Max sighed exaggeratedly, but not like she wanted to take a nail-studded bat to his balls. It was the same sort of noise she made when Susan tried to make her talk about her day when all she really wanted to do was go out and skate up and down their road over and over like the ratty little tomboy she was. 

‘Dustin, Mike, Lucas, and Will,’ she said dutifully. ‘El’s in it too, but she’s not at school with us.’

‘Who’s El?’ Billy asked carefully, as if this was new information, which from Max’s point of view it would be. They never talked about stuff like this.

Max shrugged. ‘This girl Mike’s obsessed with. She’s pretty cool, I guess, but she had, like, this crazy Dad who didn’t like her going out much, so she can be a bit weird.’

‘Had?’

‘What?’

‘You said she _had _a crazy Dad.’

‘Oh. I think social services took her away from him or something. She has, like, a guardian now instead.’

‘Who’s her guardian?’

‘Okay, _what _is going on with you?’ Max demanded, turning abruptly in her seat. ‘Why are you asking me all these questions?’

‘Just making conversation,’ Billy said. ‘You’ve never mentioned her before, is all.’

‘We don’t ‘make conversation’,’ Max said, making air quotes. ‘That’s not how _we _work.’ Here she gestures rapidly in a back-and-forth motion between them. ‘You’re being super creepy. And anyway,’ she adds, ‘I wouldn’t have brought up El because we’re not actually friends. We’re both in the party, but she hates me.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘SERIOUSLY?’ Max was about bursting out of her skin. ‘QUIT it, Billy.’

Billy _almost_ smirked. He thought maybe Max might be fighting a smile of her own next to him, although he didn’t look to check. ‘Why does she hate you?’ He persisted.

Max flopped back against the seat. ‘I don’t know. Maybe ‘hate’ is a strong word,’ she muttered. ‘She went away for a while when we first moved here and I think she feels like I… _replaced_ her or something. When she was gone. Which is stupid. Nobody can _replace _anybody else.’

‘No,’ Billy agreed, maybe a little wistfully, thinking back over this past autumn, which he’d spent the majority of trying oh-so-hard to make himself the new king of Hawkins High. 

But in all actuality, he hadn’t been trying to be anyone else for—weeks now, he realised in that moment. Not since he’d nearly killed his classmate andMax had almost castrated him. That wasn’t to say he’d been being _himself, _per se, he’d just been sort of… existing. Quietly. Aimlessly. Trying to find a new way to be that didn’t involve bullying Max into causing him grievous bodily harm. 

That used to be his outlet, the way he most expressed himself. And now he didn’t have it anymore. He used to put a lot of energy into trying to be Steve Harrington as well. And now he didn’t do that anymore either. Everything had been too raw in the week following,and now he and Steve were fucking _talking _like they didn’t actually mind each other as human beings, and…

Well. Things were all kinds of fucked up at the moment. Situation normal. 

He parked in front of the Wheelers’ and once Max had gone inside he got out his copy of _The Grapes of Wrath, _settling in for what Max promised wouldn’t be longer than half an hour. 

He’d been there ten minutes or so when someone rapped on his window, the noise of which he would adamantly protest to God and all his angels did _not _make him jump. He looked up; his stomach did a funny little flip, and he rolled down the pane. 

‘What is it, Harrington?’

‘Just saying hi. You waiting for Max?’

‘No, I’m here to fuck your ex,’ he deadpanned back, and Steve snorted.

‘Good luck with that. She’s out with Jonathan.’

‘Yeah? Shame. Guess there’s always her Mom.’

Steve struggled visibly with that, probably because he knew that Mrs Wheeler probably would fuck Billy if she got the chance. Billy was, objectively, a good-looking guy, even if he was a bit young for her and had a garbage fire personality. ‘Gross,’ Steve settled on. 

‘You watch your fucking mouth, Harrington. The woman’s a goddamn _fire hazard_ she's so hot.’

‘I mean, _you’re _gross, not—,’

‘Karen?’

‘Who’s Karen?’ Steve said blankly, before his brain caught up, ‘oh—_gross_. Don’t call her that. She’s Nancy’s _Mom_, not— ’

‘What, a person? She’s a human being, Harrington, and I’ll call her Karen if she wants me to call her Karen which, believe you me, is not in any kind of question.’ That was true. She and him had progressed, via various Max-adjacent encounters, to her insisting on his use of her first name.

Steve looked a little ill. Billy was rather enjoying it. He made a beckoning motion with his hand and leant over the window jamb conspiratorially. Steve ducked down closer, looking like he had serious reservations about the act.

Billy allowed a pause for dramatic effect, and then said with a leer, ‘Have you, ah, tried her chocolate chip cookies, amigo?’

Steve’s face went through various permeations of unhappy confusion before he said, ‘I don’t know what that means.’

Billy barked out a laugh, leaning back into the car and slapping his leg lightly. ‘They’re just cookies, man,’ he said, still grinning. ‘She gave me some when I dropped by the other week.’

‘Yeah,’ Steve said slowly, ‘she’s a _Mom_. She probably thought you needed fattening up or something.’

‘Sure fattened something up.’

‘_Gross_.’

‘Do you boys want to wait inside?’ Mrs Wheeler called across the lawn. She had come out in a dressing gown. 

Steve cast a panicked eye on Billy, who grinned at him like a shark and reached for the door. Steve made an abrupt move to hold it closed by the handle. ‘We’re fine out here, Mrs Wheeler!’ He yelled back, and waited until she disappeared back inside. 

‘Seriously man,’ he said to Billy. ‘Not cool.’

‘Whatever. You gonna get in?’

Steve seemed genuinely surprised at the offer. ‘Yeah?’

‘You must be freezing your balls off out there.’

Steve laughed his acknowledgement, and went for the passenger-side door. Looked about himself appreciatively at the black leather interior.

‘Like what you see, Harrington?’

Steve rolled his eyes. ’You know it’s a nice car, man.’

‘Doesn’t hurt to hear it once in a while. I don’t get a lot of dudes in here, if you know what I mean.’ Which was not even much of a lie, not these days. Billy hadn’t fucked anyone in his car since May. 

‘Yeah, Hargrove,’ said Harrington dryly, ‘I know what you mean. You seeing anyone at the moment?’

‘The fuck would I be _seeing_ anyone for?’

‘Just asking.’

‘Are _you_ seeing anyone at the moment?’ Billy challenged back.

‘No. Guess I’m still’ —Steve made a vague gesture by his head— ‘from the breakup.’

‘The breakup with Wheeler.’

Steve nodded.

‘The breakup with Wheeler who’s getting felt up at the movies by Byers right now.’

‘The very same,’ Steve said, wryly. ‘Though I reckon they’re done with all that by now. Nance’s curfew is ten o’clock. Can’t imagine that’s changed.’

‘You’re not mad about that?’

‘Jonathan’s a good guy,’ he said. ‘He loves her.’

‘So do you.’

Steve turned his head to look out the window, as though there was something far more interesting out there than suburban shrubbery. ‘Can we talk about something else?’ He said quietly.

‘We don’t have to talk at all.’ Billy leant forward, turned up the volume on Ratt, and Steve groaned.

‘Oh God, I’ve changed my mind. Let’s talk about my ex-girlfriend. I can do it all night._ Please_.’

‘Nope, sorry, we’ve moved on from the conversational part of this evening.’

‘Aw, we done flirting? Do you want me in the backseat already?’

Billy choked on spit. Shot back, ‘fuck yeah, Harrington, on your _hands and knees_.’

There was a brief silence, where that could have gone down _very badly, _except then Steve pointed out placidly, ‘I’d get leather burn,’ and Billy breathed an inward sigh of relief.

‘What’s sex without a little pain?’ he said, a little distracted, because he was trying to will his heart to stop pumping so hard and fast.

‘_Nice,_’ Steve said, which was not the winning move he seemed to think it was. Billy’s eyebrows rocketed into his hair.

‘_Nice_?’ He repeated, with just as much emphasis, if not more. _‘Nice?’_

‘Yeah, _nice. _Where people actually, you know, have a good time.’

_‘Nice?’_

‘You heard me,’ Steve said, though he was turning a little red.

‘Man, if a girl told me having my dick halfway up her abdomen was _nice—‘_

‘Look—

‘—you can bet I’d be yanking it straight back out—‘

‘—okay, see—‘

‘—and dropping her home before her parents had so much as checked her room for her. That’s not what I wanna hear out of anyone I’m fucking. _Nice._ Jesus Christ.’

‘Maybe I used the wrong word,’ Steve mumbled.

‘No no,’ Billy said, laughing. ‘I heard you, didn’t I? Don’t feel bad about it. Everyone’s got something.’

‘Yeah, well, I guess it’s hard to get your head round it when you’ve never had sex with someone who actually cares about you.’

‘A mortal fucking blow,’ said Billy, clutching at his chest. He thought this action might qualify as nerdier than he wanted to be seen ever in his life, so he resolved never to do it again after this one time. ‘Say there’s hope for me yet.’

‘I’m getting out the car.’

‘No no no, c’mon, stick around, I’ll be _nice_.’

‘Leaving, right now,’ Steve said. The door was opening, and he had one long leg out of the footwell and on the sidewalk.

Billy was laughing too helplessly now to protest overmuch. Steve started away from the Camaro, scarlet to his hairline, but just as quickly turned around and got back in.

Billy stopped chortling and looked at him quizzically, but Steve just shook his head, staring at a fixed point down the road.

Byers and Wheeler passed by Billy’s window from behind, joined at the hands. They didn’t appear to have seen Steve, or taken much notice of Billy’s car in general, but they did pause when further up the road they spotted the Beamer in park. Wheeler even let go of Byers’ hand.

For a beat it was silent in the car, apart from Pearcy telling someone to lift their skirt in his glottal fry. 

Billy checked the time.

‘You were right,’ Billy said conversationally. ‘Ten o’clock on the dot.’

Steve was not listening to him. At first he just breathed, and then he started mouthing something to himself Billy couldn’t quite make out. 

‘You okay?’

‘Yeah, man. It’s just, I mean it’s like you said… I still love her, you know? Though maybe you don’t know.’ 

‘Not really,’ Billy admitted. Watched Harrington lose it a little more, ducking his head in between his knees, and then—just as suddenly—picking it all up and packing everything back in again. He sniffed once and sat up straight in the seat, smoothing a hand over his hair. His eyes looked a bit bright in the dark, but he was fine. 

It made Billy feel strange.

‘Do you, uh, do you want me to go in and flush the kids out?’

‘That’d be nice,’ Steve said carefully, still not looking at him.

Billy nodded and got out of the car.

‘Don’t flirt with Mrs Wheeler,’ Steve said, all stern, like an afterthought.

‘Wouldn’t dream of it, babe,’ said Billy, on the door’s close.

Billy had never actually been inside the Wheeler house when any of the kids were there. He always waited in his car for Max to appear in the doorway. Karen was, naturally, delighted to see him, but he waived her offers of a drink and some (ha) chocolate chip cookies, and said he was really only there to chivvy Max along, so she directed him to the basement, which was apparently the kids’ hangout spot, what the _actual fuck_. No wonder Max was looking so pale lately. And here Billy was thinking it was the lack of sun in Indiana.

He went down the stairs, and it turned out to be a decent space—big, with plenty of lamplight, kitted out with soft furnishings plus a table and chairs for those freaky DD campaigns he sometimes heard Max telling Susan about. Tonight, however, all six members of the party were crowded round the table focussing on their Biology project. They all looked up simultaneously when he cleared his throat, like they had a hive mind. He could have sworn he felt a chill go down his spine.

‘Your ride awaits,’ he said, to Max obviously, but it was Henderson who responded. Said flatly, ‘I’m not getting in a car with you’  and adding, ‘nobody get in a car with him’ for the benefit of the rest of them as well.

Billy rolls his eyes; he thinks Max might be doing the same. ‘Relax, fucknut. Steve’s outside to pick up your sorry ass.’

‘Why didn’t he come in?’

‘Nancy,’ said one of the other kids quietly. They sounded like they could be a girl, and when Billy looked them over, he saw a thin, pale little face, with big soulful eyes, and a thick head of dark curls that were kind of unkempt. El, must be.

‘Nancy?’ Said Mike incredulously, in response. ‘They broke up weeks ago, how is he not over that yet?’

‘Uh, you moped over Eleven for an entire _year_,’ Dustin protested loyally.

‘She literally _vaporised, _Dustin. Right in front of my eyes. I had no idea where she went, or if she was okay—plus Nancy’s the worst so it’s _completely different.’_

‘Nancy’s not the worst.’

‘Yeah, in the worst Wheeler rankings she’s probably the least terrible,’ said Lucas.

‘Holly’s the least terrible,’ said Max.

‘What, and I’m the most terrible?’

‘Of course not, the most terrible is your Dad.’

It devolved from there. Mike shouted something about how Dustin couldn’t just say something like that about someone else’s parents; Dustin shouted back that he didn’t have a Dad so he didn’t know the rules, and Sinclair pointed out that Dustin _did_ have a Dad in Wisconsin that all of them just had to pretend didn’t exist and then Mike riffed off that and called it a double fucking standard and Billy—

Billy was forcibly reminded why he always waited in the car.

‘Maxine,’ he ground out.

‘Coming, Billy.’

She got to her feet to follow him back up the basement stairs, ‘Don’t keep your ride waiting, Henderson,’ Billy threw over his shoulder on their way out, and distinctly heard behind him a terrified whisper of ‘_how does he know my name?’_

When they got outside Billy could already see that Steve gone back to his own car. He sent Max to wait in the Camaro, which she did only looking slightly curious, and then he headed over to the Beamer. Steve had already got the window down by the time he reached him.

‘Does that Wheeler kid ever stop shouting?’ He said, by way of a greeting.

Steve laughed, and then shook his head mournfully.

Billy scrutinised him for a moment. Should he ask if he was feeling better? He hadn’t exactly been ill…

‘Henderson should be out in a bit,’ he said eventually.

‘Cool. El too?’

‘Uh, I guess so. You taking her back tonight as well?’

Steve nodded, and Billy snorted. ‘You really are a bleeding heart sometimes, aintcha, Harrington? Later.’ He gives a small wave goodbye and heads back to his car, hearing Steve echo his farewell after him. 

‘Why were you talking to Steve?’ Max said, when he got into the car. ‘He hates you.’

‘He doesn’t hate me.’

‘Uhh, yeah he does, dipshit. You almost killed him with a dinner plate.’

‘He doesn’t hate me,’ Billy said again.

‘_Yeah_, he _does_,’ Max repeated, sounding really passionate about it this time, and the conversation was treading _way_ too close to a _does-not-does-too_ debacle, so Billy snorted and said, ‘Weren’t you the one who said ‘hate’ was a strong word?’

‘Yeah, for an entirely different situation. El and me have never tried to kill each other.’

‘That you know of.’

‘Oh, what_ever_, Billy,’ Max said, like _he’s_ the tiresome one between them. ‘I don’t care. Just don’t beat him up again. He counts as one of my friends too.’

‘Ooh, you’re getting popular now, Maxine,’ Billy remarks. ‘You’ve marked six whole people as off-limits for a beatdown—or should I be counting El as well, bring it up to seven?’

‘Honestly? I _dare_ you to try hurting El, Billy. It would make my entire life.’

*

It was maybe around the time Billy lent Steve his Steinback essay to read (‘not to _copy_, Harrington, how do you ever expect to learn anything? You’re writing your own using mine as a benchmark of quality’) that Billy realised he wasn’t just _attracted _to Harrington anymore. Obviously that had always been a thing—at certain points in time, _the _thing, like nothing else existed in the world except Steve’s perfect long legs and dumb idiot face.

No, Billy _liked _Steve. He really fucking liked him. 

He also realised, bizarrely after the fact, that they might be becoming actual friends.

He gave a lot of credit to Wheeler on that front. It became obvious to Billy that if she hadn’t made her then-boyfriend feel like such a pat of Indiana cowshit by sleeping with the yearbook lurker Steve probably never would have looked Billy’s way. As it was, Harrington had clearly started looking beyond the pale for company and, barring one awkward apology that he would agonise over til his _dying day_, Billy had made the cut for reasons more incidental than profound.

There was just lot of overlap in how they both spent their time. They both played basketball, obviously; they both spent half their lives waiting in parking lots for middle schoolers; they both, insofar as Billy could tell, tried not to be at home when their parents were. It was not altogether weird that something was happening here—whatever Max or Henderson or Tommy fucking H had to say about it. Billy could not have cared less if he tried on that score. Except when what Henderson had to _say _about it involved the Camaro. Then he had words with Steve. Like, _if that little pissant teepees my car one more time I’m gonna make him eat every toilet roll I find on her—AFTER I’ve taken them home and used them first. Capisce, amigo? _

‘Yeah, I capisce, Jesus,’ Steve had said to that particular threat, rolling his eyes. ‘You’re gonna _re-roll_ your shitty asswipes and bring them to school to feed a twelve-year-old boy. Got it. You’re disgusting. I’ll pass it along.’

Okay, first of all, Henderson was thirteen, but Billy was not going to beleaguer the point. He’d have to admit he knew something about the kid other than his last name and the fact that he had a shitty goddamn attitude. It was no wonder he and Max were friends, except Max’s disapproval of the Steve and Billy thing was a more darkly simmering animal. Like, sometimes she’d suck her teeth at him if she saw them both lighting up together outside the arcade, but other than that she didn’t really comment. It was a blessing in disguise, really, ‘cause the last thing he needed was her mouthing off at home about the new company her stepbrother was keeping. Not again.

It was also not worth aggravating Steve when, despite his bitching, he actually _was_ gonna talk to Henderson about the toilet roll—like he talked to him about the shaving foam when it happened, and the silly string, and the Deniece Williams cassette that somehow got loaded in the tape player, and the goddamn frog in the glove box. 

(‘It could have fucking _died_ in there, Harrington. Doesn’t he know _anything _about amphibians? Isn’t he best friends with his biology teacher for chrissakes? Oh Jesus, don’t fucking look at me like that, Maxine is my actual 24-hour nightmare, okay, I’m obviously gonna pick up on shit. Handle your nerds or I swear to God I’m coming for them.’)

Steve talked to Dustin about all of it. His warnings only stuck for so long, but he did dish them out. 

Because Steve liked Billy too. They sat in the cafeteria together more lunchtimes than not, and when not they might be in one another’s cars instead. If Billy timed it right and kept it clean (or if he made it filthy and timed it _dead_ wrong), he could make Steve laugh. Steve offered to pick up Max for him like, all the time, which Billy would never take him up on because go fucking figure, but it was still there. 

Steve had let Billy drive the Beamer once or twice, even if he then bitched him out for wearing out the tread. Billy had never let Steve drive the Camaro, obviously, but he had let him hang out the passenger window and whoop while he went all the way to one-twenty along a straight nighttime road. 

And Steve might not like Billy turning up out of the blue on one of his off days, but he still didn’t turn him away.

_That had to be enough_, Billy had thought to himself—had _kept _thinking to himself, like a threat, every time he said something stupid and didn’t get shut down, or his body moved too close and didn’t meet violence, or even just got lost in a daydream of them together that Steve never dispelled by dating anyone new. 

But, as it now turned out, he didn’t even get to have that.

*

‘Wow, you look like ass.’

‘Fuck off, Tommy,’ Billy mutters, unable to muster any of his usual vitriol.

‘No, seriously, are you ill? What’s up? Did you get chlamydia again? I _told _you to stop going around with Robin Buckley, man, that chick is fucking nasty.’

‘I never had chlamydia, I’ve told you, it was the flu.’

It was chlamydia. Except Billy suspects he got it from blowing a guy round the back of the Hideaway and he hardly wanted to advertise the fact. He’d seriously considered blaming Buckley off the bat, but hadn’t actually ended up doing so. It was pure bad luck for her that Tommy had seen his tennis ball testicles in the showers and come to an unfortunate conclusion.

Not that Buckley would care very much that the entire male population of Hawkins High was staying out of her way. She, or so Billy had inferred from their numerous smoking sessions behind the bike sheds—which in all honesty had never involved fucking of any kind and mostly comprised of them bitching about Steve Harrington for whatever reason—was really not a fan of dick. 

‘Sure looked like chlamydia,’ Tommy is sceptically saying now.

‘Yeah, well, you would know, wouldn’t you?’ Billy bites back at him, and that shuts him up. Carol gave Tommy chlamydia _twice _before she had it treated, which Billy only knows because Steve told him one time when they were off their faces in his pool house. He also knows it’s a closely guarded secret and a very sensitive issue for both parties involved, which is why it makes such valuable ammunition. 

So Tommy fucking H leaves him alone.

He goes to his classes—the ones he doesn’t share with Harrington, anyway. It’s not a morning where he learns anything much, and not just because he ends up spending half of it behind the bike sheds. They're a great hiding-place, always are, except h e’s flushed out from there eventually by Buckley, who appears just before lunchtime glowing over an incident in English where Harrington apparently fucked up a reading and everyone laughed at him, which makes Billy a little mad in all honesty, because it’s not like Harrington can _help_ his problem with words. He can help other stuff, sure, like his untidy eating, his obsessive haircare, and his complete obliviousness to the people around him, to name a few glaring examples—but the words aren’t his fault. 

He says as much, just to get Buckley to stop talking. She looks at him with betrayal in her eyes, and he stamps out his half-finished cig and leaves her to mull over her prejudices. He goes to the Camaro to take a nap.

He’s woken up at the end of the day by Max getting into the passenger seat. She’s upset about something, almost in tears, but she won’t say what. Billy tries several potential pressure points—Lucas, her Maths teacher, the infamous El—before she snaps at the last one and tells him to shut the fuck up, so Billy thinks there’s gold in those hills. 

‘What are _you_ doing out here anyway?’ She throws his way.

Billy shrugs, and they sit together mostly in silence, if you can ignore Max’s sniffles, until he starts the car and drives them home.

Monday passes without incident.

*

On Tuesday evening someone calls Billy’s house phone. Neil picks it up and asks a few questions, only to gesture Billy over from the sofa with a grunt.

Billy goes like a man to the gallows.

‘Hello?’ He says cautiously into the receiver.

‘Hey, it’s me.’

Billy wants to slam the phone down right away, but Neil’s still within earshot, and he doesn’t want to act in any way of note. 

‘Hey,’ he says noncommittally. 

There’s a pause, and Billy has to prompt through his teeth, ‘did you want something?’

‘I haven’t been seeing you around recently,’ Harrington says. ‘I wanted to talk to you.’

‘I can’t right now.’

‘Okay. When?’

‘Not _now_,’ Billy says, thinking _shut up, Harrington_, because despite his best efforts Neil looks like he’s listening in with attention. ‘I gotta go. I’ll see you.’

‘Will you?’ Harrington sounds sceptical.

‘Good_bye _now,’ Billy says, and hangs up. He goes back to the sofa with his Dad, because they’d been watching TV together before, except now it looks like that companionable activity might be over and done with.

‘Who was that?’ Neil says. 

‘Someone from school,’ Billy says. ‘He was asking if I wanted to help him study for a test we've got coming up.’

To his relief, Neil appears to accept this, but Billy can’t relax for the rest of the evening. He’s so on edge that Max takes to calling him Crazy Eyes during dinner and keeps it up until they go to bed—_pass the salt, Crazy Eyes; you gonna be long in there, Crazy Eyes? _Billy almost goes for her when she pulls a face at him to supplement the nickname, going bug-eyed and staring at her nose at the same time so she looks twice as fucked up as usual. He starts forward and has to mentally restrain himself from getting a hand round her throat.

Max notices. She stops with the face and the taunting, and that’s when Billy realises it wasn’t taunting at all. She was _teasing _him, maybe even trying to make him _laugh._

It makes him feel like ten kinds of awful, even though he tells himself the opposite over and over again until the words lose meaning—_you couldn’t care less, you couldn’t care less,you couldn’t care less._

*

What’d given him away? It could have been _anything_; it’s not like this is something he just turns on and off. More like carefully covers up, like an animal that buries its shit.

Has he done something more overtly inverted than usual recently? He’d sucked a guy’s dick, yeah, but he doesn’t think it could be that. The only person who knows it will be just as keen for it to remain a secret as Billy is.

Unless he’s thinking about this all wrong, and Steve has known about him for _a while_, in which case… fuck, it really could be anything. Anything he’s done since arriving in Hawkins that autumn. 

He supposes he can take comfort in the fact that he is far less _open_ here than he ever was in Santa Barbara, so even if _Steve_ knows something, he doubts anyone else does. 

God, but if anyone _was_ to know something, it _would _be Steve, wouldn’t it? They hang out _all the time. _Billy’s more honest with him than anyone, more genuine, more awkwardly giving of himself. He just always thought Steve was safe, because Steve was stupid. Steve didn’t realise his girlfriend was in love with someone else until she’d fucked them, for crying out loud.

But maybe he’s overestimated the extent of Steve’s stupidity. Maybe Steve _knows_ simply because he _knows Billy_. And, worst of all, maybe Steve knows that Billy’s into guys because he knows that Billy’s into _him. _

*

He’s at lunch on Friday when he hears footsteps approach his table, and a familiar voice go: ‘Trade you my apple for your OJ?'

Harrington’s holding up a juice carton, thumb tucked back to show his wares.

Billy reacts very carefully.

‘Cute,’ he says.

Steve smiles uncertainly, drops his hand. ‘Can I sit?’ He says.

There’s a pause, and then Billy gestures to the chair opposite_. Go ahead_. 

Steve’s relief is palpable as he sits down, carefully concentrating on his lunch tray, like he’s afraid he’ll spook Billy if he gives him too much attention all in one go. It leaves Billy free to study him closely across the table, with the red tips of Harrington’s ears the only indication that he has noticed. 

Harrington approaching him in _friendship _is not an eventuality Billy has considered in all this, if a friendly overture is indeed what this is. 

After a bit he snorts quietly and grabs Harrington’s apple juice, raising his eyebrows when he gets a surprised look in return. He looks pointedly at his  orange juice— the closest he’ll come to participating verbally in this middle-school-esque trade, and Steve smiles again as he takes it, this time with confidence. 

‘So how’s your day going?’ He says, the ice just shy of broken. 

‘Fine. Yours?’

Harrington gives a nod that presents more like a shrug, which isn’t a surprise. Their current issues aside, Billy often thinks that Steve probably doesn’t like school that much anymore.

‘Have you had a good week?’

Billy _looks _at him. ‘It was all right,’ he says, eventually.

‘Get up to much?’

‘Nope.’ 

‘Yeah me neither,’ Harrington says. ‘It was pretty quiet. I’m trying to focus on figuring out what I’m doing with my life next year. Mostly that means hanging around eating loads of eggos and sometimes sitting at a desk.’

Billy’s got something he could say here, but he’s not going to. He’s firm with himself.

‘And then the kids had a D‘n’D campaign on Wednesday. I picked Dustin and El up from Lucas’ and they tried to get me to join in and stuff. Max was there,’ he says, looking at Billy searchingly. ‘She was the last one waiting for a ride after we went.’

‘I was late,’ Billy says, like Steve doesn’t already know that. His ribs still hurt from the recompense he’d paid, but he hadn’t been going to risk seeing Harrington in passing so he’d waited down the the way until he saw the Beamer depart. 

‘I looked for you.’

Billy knows that. He saw him glancing up and down the street. 

He doesn’t say anything.

‘I wanted to talk.’

‘We’re talking now.’

‘Yeah, I guess we are. But I guess I was hoping for somewhere a little more private. Maybe we could—’

‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’

Steve flinches. ‘Right,’ he says. He sits back in his chair, eyeing Billy up speculatively. Then he looks about the cafeteria, checking if anyone’s within earshot—which is so unsubtle Billy could _scream—_after which he leans in close and says quietly, ‘I’m sorry, okay? It was a shit day. I did everything wrong.’

Suddenly Billy can’t get the breath all the way down into his chest. It’s like Steve’s taken ahold of his throat and is giving it a gentle squeeze. He couldn’t respond if he wanted to.

‘You weren’t supposed to show up in the morning,’ Steve continues to mumble. ‘It threw me off, and you _were _an asshole, y’know, even though you said you wouldn’t be. And then—with Nancy—’

Billy sits back so abruptly that his chair scrapes along the floor.

‘Where are you going?’ Steve says—way too loud and plaintive, his eyes big.

‘For a smoke,’ Billy manages. ‘I’ll see you later.’

‘I really need to talk to you,’ Steve persists. 

For the fucking love of God, If he says one more thing _like that_ Billy is going rip out his throat.

‘I’ll be at practice. Maybe.’

And then he tries not to look too much like he’s booking it as he leaves. 

*

He doesn’t actually go to practice, but he does wait in the parking lot after, chain-smoking his nerves away as he watches the rest of the team leave in twos and threes until he knows Steve’s the only one left in the locker room. Whether he likes it or not, he’s gonna have to say _something _about this shit, if only to stop Steve making scenes in public fucking places. He’d been _starting_ to think he didn’t have to worry about him shooting off at the mouth, but clearly no one could be so lucky.

He goes in, and Steve’s packing up his locker. His hair is wet, dripping almost. He hasn’t bothered to towel-dry it even slightly, and the back of his shirt is rapidly growing damp at the neck.

Billy clears his throat, and Steve spins.

‘Hey,’ he says, smiling a bit helplessly. ‘I didn’t think—‘

‘Look, let’s get something straight here.’ Billy cuts right to the chase, and Steve immediately stops smiling. ‘You think you know something about me, fine, I can’t do anything about that. But if you _ever _try talking about that shit again—_ever_, Harrington, to _anybody, anywhere—_I’ll kill you. Right then and there, I’ll kill you.’

There’s a loaded moment, the only sound the wet slap of dripping water in the showers. 

‘Capisce?’ Billy says quietly. 

‘Yeah,’ Steve says, ‘Yeah, I—capisce.’

‘Good.’

He makes to go—he needs another fucking cigarette, Jesus Christ, he’s going to drop dead of sudden onset lung cancer any fucking second now—but as soon as he lurches into movement Steve does too, like he’s going to cut him off before he gets to the door.

‘Billy, can’t I—’

‘What did I _just _say, Harrington?’

‘No, I—it’s me. Let’s talk about _me._’

There’s a pause, and then Billy says, ‘what about you?’

‘I—okay, this is gonna be hard, because I thought you knew. I thought _I _was the one running playing catch-up.’ He sits down on one of the benches, rubbing his forehead with one hand and studiously avoiding eye contact.

‘I loved Nancy,’ he says abruptly. ‘Obviously. But I haven’t—I don’t anymore. I don’t love her anymore. I haven’t for a while. Going through her stuff at the weekend—I wasn’t trying to get over her, or get closure, or whatever. I’m already there; I don’t need it. It was weird dredging it all up again, sure, but not because I still wanna be with her. I don’t,’ he adds, looking oddly at Billy, ‘want to be with her.’

‘Okay,’ Billy says, because it seems like Steve is expecting him to say something.

It’s apparently not enough, because Steve waits a beat or so longer, and then sighs. ‘This is really difficult when I’m not allowed to talk about you as well,’ he says. He’s gone very red; Billy’s just noticing. 

‘I think you might be my best friend,’ he says quietly. ‘I mean, I wouldn’t say I’m very good at reading people, or anything like that, but I think I _get_ you, and it seems like you might get me too, and even though we haven’t been hanging out all that long... I feel like I’ve known you longer, or something.’

‘Steve—’

‘I like you,’ Steve says, scarlet now. ‘And I don’t mean—not _just_ as a friend, in case that’s not coming across with this shit. I have feelings for you. And I thought—like, I thought maybe I wasn’t alone, but I don’t know.’  Then he sighs, and gives up all pretence of talking about this like it’s not a two-sided thing.

‘Look, I thought you were waiting for me to get my shit together or something, until I had Nance in my rearview mirror. That’s why I was going through all her stuff on Saturday, getting it out. I was trying to, like, show you I was there, that I was ready to try for something if you were. Because it seemed like you’d been waiting. But then I came out of the house and you were trying it on with Mrs Wheeler—I'd left you alone for _one minute _to try and do this thing, and I came out and you were putting the moves on someone else, giving them the eyes you normally give _me _when you think I don't see, and—yeah. I lost it, a bit.’

Billy's awash with feeling now. What Steve's said, what Steve feels—it's come at him like a bank of water, seeping past his clothes and skin until it’s right inside, rearranging the architecture of his body to make room for its course.

He finds his voice. ‘What kind of bullshit—I wasn’t _waiting _for you, Harrington, I—’ He stops, swallows, continues: ‘I didn’t even know you were fucking _coming.’_

‘Yeah,’ Steve says. ‘Yeah, I’m getting that.’

He regards him silently for a moment—Billy doesn’t think he can take it; there’s a river in a rainstorm inside his chest, rising and fattening with the gift of inclement weather—and then he says: ‘come with me somewhere?’

Billy needs to go home. Neil’s going to be furious as it is.

But he nods.

*

Steve drives him somewhere. Billy thinks it's probably his house, but he's not sure in the dark and all the madness of emotion. All he knows is that when Steve pulls in and they're _finally_ somewhere quiet and secluded, where the trees are tall and the light has long gone, Billy is so overcome that he’s climbing across the console to straddle Steve’s lap before the car is even in park, gripping his jaw with one hand and kissing him open-mouthed and wet.

The physical onslaught clearly takes Steve surprise. Billy feels him flail, then hears the crank of the handbrake as he manages to secure it. Hands settle clumsily on his hips, Steve’s lips moving in time to accommodate the rhythm Billy’s setting. He’s receiving beautifully, but Billy wants him to _give_, give some more, so he smacks at his chest—_kiss _me_—_and Steve unsticks. Pushes forward into him, strains upward to kiss him properly. Billy goes for the recliner dial on the seat with his free hand and kicks at the lever to send the seat jolting down and back. His hand comes back to twin with the other to angle Steve’s head_—__not _cradle it, fuck you, fuck everybody_—_and he loses time. 

‘Okay, okay, stop, stop,’ Steve says, panting, pushing him back. He looks positively wild, his hair spiking every which way, his eyes bright and burning. 

‘What?’ Billy pants back, trying again for his mouth, but Steve holds him firm.

‘I just—need to breathe. We’re going so fast, I—’ 

‘You said I didn’t have to wait anymore,’ Billy reminds him. Steve allows him the range of movement required to bend down and suck at his neck. 

‘_You _said you didn’t know you’d been waiting,’ Steve accuses back.

‘I _said _I didn’t know you were _coming_,’ Billy corrects, his voice slipping into a purr. ‘And it’s sure turned out different than I was expecting, let me tell you.’ He gets a hand on Steve’s cock through his jeans, and Steve groans so loud that Billy goes back to swallow the noise. 

‘Billy, I’ve never,’ Steve tries, pushing at him again, and Billy actually pauses.

‘I know,’ he says. ‘I know, Steve. I’ll be nice.’

He hooks a finger under his chin and tilts it up, brushing the gentlest, chastest kiss against his lips to prove his point. 

‘Here, I'll walk you to your door,’ he says, because a quick scan of his surroundings has revealed that they are, indeed, at the Harrington house. He pushes at the driver's door and gets out, offering Steve a hand.

‘I'm not sure I can walk with this,’ Steve mutters, probably referring to the actual _monster _sitting up in his pants right now, but he’s taking Billy's hand all the same, getting out of the Beamer and locking it so they can go up the driveway together.

When they get to his porch Billy pushes him up his door with very little warning.

‘Whoa,’ Steve says, as if it’s such a fucking shock. Billy huffs lightly against his collarbone, which he’s managed to uncover and nose at. ‘Be _nice_.’

‘Only so nice I can be,’ Billy says. ‘You been coming for this ever since you asked for my OJ at lunch.’

‘Umm, I was coming for juice,’ Steve argues, like he’s pissy about it, but he’s clearly going for a laugh.

‘If you say so,’ Billy says on a shrug. ‘Sure seems like you got a taste for sugar either way,’ and he pulls lightly on Steve’s earlobe with his teeth.

Steve makes a choked noise.

‘Billy...’

‘You good?’ 

Steve’s shivery, but he nods, and then Billy nods, and he presses him against the front door and returns his lips to that trembling mouth. 

He’s doing slow, shallow little hip rolls without too much concern. It feels good without feeling too good—he’s not in any danger of going off just yet.

Sooner or later Steve hesitantly starts mimicking him, and once they work out a heady, undulating rhythm it’s fucking heaven. Billy’s breath starts to come in a bit faster, he breaks their kiss to suck air down his throat, resting his temple against Steve’s forehead and breathing until Steve gently nudges him back to his mouth, like a cat needy to be petted.

_Okay, time to stop_, he thinks hazily to himself, as he strokes Steve’s tongue languidly with his own. _Fuck, I’m gonna eat him—I really gotta—_

He pulls back, hopefully more suave about it than he feels. It’s gratifying that Steve tries to follow him.

‘Can I stay?’ he whispers. ‘Do you want me to stay?’ 

Steve blinks slowly. He looks drunk. ‘I drove you here?’ He says, surfacing a bit. The _you don’t have a car, moron_ goes unsaid.

‘You wanted nice,’ Billy reminds him, glaring.

Steve rolls his eyes. ‘Yeah, and you staying over would be _super _fucking nice, dickwad.’ Billy doesn’t say anything, and Steve’s expression changes, and he says softly, ‘I meant slow down; I didn’t mean stop.’

‘Yeah?’

‘_Yeah. _Let’s go the fuck inside already.’ He turns to get the key in the lock. Billy ends up slowing down the process a bit by draping himself across Steve’s back, but he doesn’t seem to mind much. 

‘We haven’t eaten. Did you want food?’ Steve says without enthusiasm, once they’re in. 

‘Maybe later.’

Which probably means tomorrow morning, honestly, because Steve’s gonna pass right out after what Billy starts doing to him in approximately two minutes time. He can live with that though.

They get upstairs to Steve’s room, and Steve’s got his shirt off before they’re through the door, his chest bare and pale in the dark. Billy puts his hands all over it, kissing Steve without pause until the moment Steve gets a hand in his curls and the light tugging sensation elicits a sound that may qualify as a whine. 

Steve seems to pause slightly, and then Billy feels his lips spread in a smile against his own. 

‘You like that, huh?’ Steve says, which Billy doesn’t bother to dignify with a response - he _obviously _fucking likes it - except then Steve pulls at his hair a little harder, which might or might not be to demand the answer he’s withheld, and he ends up breathing out, ‘yeah. Yeah, I do, I like that,’ and Steve smiles all warm at him and it makes him feel golden inside. 

‘What else do you like, baby?’

Billy bristles immediately, and tears back. ‘Don’t call me that.’

Steve cocks his head, now regarding him from the slight distance Billy’s swiftly put between them. ‘Why not?’ He says curiously.

‘Because I don’t like it.’

‘You don’t?’

‘_No.’ _And then he kicks out. ‘Why, did _Wheeler_ like it? Did she like you running your mouth as you screwed yourself into her?’

Steve bristles back straightaway at the mention of his ex. ’Don’t talk about her like that. She’s got nothing to do with this.’

‘She does if you think for one fucking second I’m gonna be anything like her,’ Billy snarls, and is horrified to feel tears pricking at his eyes. The shock on Steve’s face tells him it hasn’t been missed, and Billy tries to resist the hug when it comes.

‘Hey, hey,’ Steve’s saying, pulling him in tight. ‘I’m sorry, b—I’m sorry, okay? I won’t. I’m sorry. I just wanna call you nice things is all.’

‘I’m not nice,’ Billy says, though the effect is kind of ruined with how his face is mashed in under Steve’s chin, his dangerous not-nice fists balled up and useless against Steve’s chest. 

Steve doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then—

‘I really hate your Dad,’ he says quietly.

Billy opens his mouth—to say what, he doesn’t know. Ask where the fuck that came from, maybe. Ask him why. Why he hates Neil, why he thinks he can say that shit to Billy’s face, even. 

But Steve’s leaned down again to capture his mouth before he can form the words. Billy doesn’t necessarily want to be drawn into a kiss just then, and holds himself a little reserved, but Steve’s a real charmer when he tries. 

‘C’mon, kiss me back, Hargrove. Or did I ruin the mood? Don’t you want this anymore?’

Billy feels heat rise to his face being spoken to like that. ‘I—I want it,’ he stammers. 

‘What do you want?’ Steve says, on a pause.

‘You,’ Billy mutters. ‘I want you, asshole. Christ, you’re so fucking bossy.’

Steve bites sharply at his lower lip, but even as Billy’s gasping into it he laves over the sting with his tongue.

Billy waits for him to say something else. He feels lit up, electric. No one’s ever had him follow their lead before. But Steve just kisses at his neck, running his hands down Billy’s cheek to get his thumbs in the divots of his hips. 

It’s sweet. Steve was always going to be sweet. But Billy is also reminded that Steve has never done this before.

The slight prickle of disappointment he feels then goes a long way on clarifying how he feels about Steve bossing him around.

He can do this though. He nudges Steve off him and straddles his thighs, going to pop the button on his jeans, but Steve makes a noise, so he stops. Looks up at him with one eyebrow cocked.

‘We good, Harrington?’

‘You’re skipping steps,’ Steve says, leaning upward and reaching for the hem of Billy’s shirt. ‘Take your clothes off.’

‘Right. Ah, this first then?’ He also puts a hand to his shirt.

Steve looks at him, assessing in silence.Then he nods encouragingly. ‘Yeah, that first. Then these’ —he rings Billy’s ankles with his hands, touching his socks— ‘then these.’ His hands move to Billy’s denim-clad thighs.

‘Okay. You wanna help, or?’

Steve shimmies back on the bed a bit so that he’s resting securely on the pillow, getting one arm behind his head as well. The smirk on his face, eyes half-mast, clearly communicates an intent to watch.

Billy keeps things simple, doesn’t let anything evolve beyond a point he thinks Steve’s not ready for. It’s more fun for him anyway, he realises, when Steve feels he’s in control. He’s always telling Billy what to do, what works, what could work _better_, how good he looks—honestly, kissing aside, there’s barely a moment his mouth’s closed.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Billy tells him without heat, just the once, and gets such a hard tug at his hair he sees stars.

It’s good. Billy feels clean and uncomplicated, narrowed down to the give and take of sensation. Steve tells him he loves him when he comes, which Billy obviously won’t hold him to, but it _is _nice to hear and Billy kisses him for it as sweetly as he knows how. Cleans them both up like a gentleman, and as soon as he’s done Steve snugs up close, rolling over and slinging his arms around him loosely. ‘Stay over,’ he mutters, eyes closed, already on the verge of sleep.

‘You drove me here,’ Billy reminds him.

‘Oh yeah.’

Billy kisses his eyebrow. Steve winks out like a light, but Billy stays awake, processing.

He’d started the week thinking, okay, worst-case scenario, Steve Harrington might kick him to death in the school parking lot, and now he’d finished it by coming all over Steve Harrington’s stomach. What the actual fuck was his life right now. 

He’s too wired to drop off, riding high on the crest of this wild thought, but when he tries to get up to maybe use his initiative in the kitchen and make some toast, Steve proves so sleepily recalcitrant he’s obliged to stay and play body pillow. He lies there thinking and thinking, and at one point even smiling to himself once in the dark. Eventually his mind settles, and he rests.

*

Billy stays over at Steve’s all weekend. His parents aren’t around, naturally, and Billy clears it with Neil by saying he’s hanging out with the basketball team—which technically he is, if only one member of it, and then he sucks Steve’s dick and gets a handjob Saturday evening, so he wakes up on Sunday morning in a pretty darned good mood. 

Until he’s puttering about downstairs—Steve is slowly coming to back up in his bedroom—when he sees a car pull up in the drive. He squints through a window, and sees Nancy Wheeler in the front seat, looking nervous. 

He goes upstairs to get Steve, who looks mystified at this development.

‘What’s she doing here?’ He says.

‘Oh, did you want me to go check?’ Billy says acidly. He’s half-dressed and his hair is full of jizz, but it still takes Steve a horrified moment to decide he’s joking and let out a strangled laugh. 

‘No, I’ll go. Just let me—’ The end of his sentence disappears into the sweater he pulls on over his head. He shimmies back into a discarded pair of jeans, puzzling a bit over the fit until Billy points out that Jesus, they’re his, okay, and yes, he has got a bit of junk in his trunk, thanks for fucking noticing.

‘Maybe she’s here to get me back,’ Steve suggests lightly, once he’s stopped chortling over Billy’s God-given goods, swiping a hand through his hair to make it look slightly less like a sexhead. 

Billy doesn’t laugh. Steve may think he’s hilarious but Billy’s a little _insecure _about all that and doesn’t appreciate the implication.

He stays upstairs while Steve goes down to see her, watching surreptitiously from a window as they meet on the doorstep and exchange pleasantries. It looks awkward, but they’re both wearing good-natured smiles and giving it their best.

Nancy hands him a bag, which Steve peers into, his face morphing from curious to resigned in an instant. He nods at his ex, they talk a bit more, and then Wheeler starts shifting her feet about like she’s making to go. 

That’s when Billy stops watching. He doesn’t know how what he’ll do if they hug goodbye or if she, like, kisses him on his goddamn cheek. Leave a hickey on Steve’s face, probably. 

Steve comes back up a few minutes later carrying a bag and wearing a very odd expression.

‘What?’ Billy says, trying (and failing) to sound casual. ‘What did she want?’

Steve sighs, and passes over the bag. ‘She, ah, she thought my Mom might want this back.’

Billy looks inside.

Eight-year-old Steve Harrington as Mary the Mother of God glows back up at him from the ceremony of his photo frame , holding a bundle of fake baby Jesus to his skinny chest.

‘You’re an asshole,’ Steve says, over the sound of Billy’s roar of laughter.

‘Fuck yes. Man, I fucking hope she has a mixtape for you on Monday.’

‘Oh my god, you actually wanna be bald, don’t you. You just don’t have the balls to shave it off yourself so you’re trying to manipulate _me _into doing it for you.’

‘You’re not fooling anyone, Harrington. You’re never gonna touch a hair on my head.’

‘No,’ Steve says, stroking through a curl, ‘but I would call open season on your car.’

Billy stops laughing abruptly. ‘Steve,’ he says, as Steve leans in to kiss the patch of skin he’s just exposed.

‘Mm?’

‘If Henderson touches the Camaro—‘

‘I like how you always just _assume _it’s Dustin, even though there are six of them and they all hate you equally. Well, maybe not El.’

‘If _any _of those shitheads—nope, you know what, forget it, we’re done. I’m calling this now.’

‘Okay, baby,’ Steve says, and Billy actually manages not to twitch too much, enjoying the endearment as it hits him just to the left of his sternum and travels inward, ‘You better remember to take all your stuff with you though. I’m not making up another box.’


End file.
